Paper Voting Ballots Could Be A Thing Of The Past
Election Commission Looks To Make Changes
Thursday, November 19, 2009
BENTONVILLE — Should the Benton County Quorum Court approve the expenditure of $360,000 for the Election Commission to purchase 200 new electronic voting machines, paper ballots could soon be a thing of the past.
“Right now, it is an idea that is open for discussion,” Bill Williams, chairman of the election commission, said.
Purchasing the 200 machines — taking the total number of machines to 400 in the county — is just one step to make county elections more efficient and less expensive, Williams said. The extra 200 voting machines would save the county more than $95,000 in 2010, according to information from the Election Commission.
No paper ballots on Election Day has several upsides, commissioner E.J. Miller said.
With paper ballots, there is the chance a ballot wouldn’t count due to ovals not being marked correctly, resulting in a ballot that isn’t read correctly, Miller said. Another problem with the paper ballots relates to, believe it or not, weather. When ballots are transported in rainy weather, there is a small chance they might get wet or soggy, causing ink to bleed through onto other ballots, Miller said. A worst-case scenario would be if ballots were stolen, Miller said.
“The paper ballots are unreliable, and the days of hand counting in Benton County, where we have 107,000-plus voters, are gone,” Williams said. “It is, in my mind, irresponsible to use a method (paper ballots) which is less reliable and more expensive when voters can have a better solution.”
Provisional ballots and absentee ballots would still be paper ballots, but the Election Commission hopes to have all of the elections nearly 100 percent electronically by 2012, Williams said.
Robbyn Tumey of Rogers, though, doesn’t trust electronic voting machines. Tumey is a member of the Benton County Democratic Central Committee.
“I get to see it. I get to touch it. I get to fill it in and I just feel better about (paper ballots),” Tumey said. “Frankly, I run computers all day and I know things happen, intentionally or unintentionally.”
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